Sometimes...

Sometimes I think about what I used to eat and get mad at the fact that I'm somehow fat. This usually happens when I'm reading "easy diet tips." They say the most ridiculous things. Like, eliminate or cut down on soda. What, the two cans a month? Yeah, I'll thank you next year after I've lost a pound due to your excellent advice. I may have eaten Taco Bell once or twice a week when I was a heavy stoner a few summers ago, but recently? I think the last time I ate fast food was at the end of May (and yes, it was Taco Bell, yum). And as a teenager, never - I didn't have the money. I may have eaten more cookies than I should in a sitting, but only once a month to once a season do cookies appear in my vicinity. While living with my parents I would sigh at the words "let's have a big salad for dinner" because it happened so often.

Sometimes I think about what I used to eat and wonder that I didn't get fatter. This usually happens when I'm looking for calorie counts. Like that delicious cheese popcorn I was eating on the recent camping trip. I ate half- and quarter-servings on the trip. But back in high school? I'd buy a bag at afternoon break and eat the whole thing for a snack - a 5 serving, 800 calorie snack. Or seconds of rice and beans. We ate rice and beans for dinner all the time at my house, and it's good healthy food. But a decent bowl is about 200 calories rice, 200 calories beans, and 100 calories cheese, plus negligible salsa and sometimes avocado. You take seconds (not uncommon for me) and that's quadruple digits in one sitting. And don't forget the bag of chocolate mint UFOs (now discontinued, but basically chocolate chips) that only took about 2 days to disappear from the locker.

I guess it all balances out in the end. What I eat has always been reasonable; it's the portion sizes that were out of whack. I don't lack self-control, just the knowledge/perspective that would have made me think twice about some of my choices.

And while I would like to end the post there, I can't help feeling it necessary to say: damn my parents, unnecessarily nagging me about exercise and cheese when they should have been warning me away from seconds! But I understand, anyway - they stress the things they struggled with themselves.